About

Welcome to Anglezarke.net, where I hope to present the most comprehensive resource, online or off, of this fantastic part of the West Pennine Moors. A place of ruined farmsteads, babbling brooks, twenty-thousand year-old settlements, abundant wildlife and outstanding scenery…

Outline of Yarrow Reservoir overlaid onto old mapping showing what was replaced in the construction.

Anglezarke, Anlezark, Anglezark… The name Anglezarke is derived from two Norse-Gaelic elements. In the first part comes from the name Anlaf, a form of the popular Scandinavian personal name of Olav. In the second part comes from the Old Norse word erg or the Brythonic word cognate with Gaelic word àiridh (dialectal arke or argh) both meaning a ‘hill pasture or shieling’. The two elements together mean ‘Anlaf’s hill pasture’ – i.e. ‘the hill pasture belonging to Anlaf’. The earliest spelling of the name was in 1202 when it was recorded as ‘Andelevesarewe’. By 1225 this had become ‘Anlavesargh’, in 1351 ‘Anlasargh’, and by 1559 ‘Anlazarghe’. Our maps, starting in the 1700’s, first reference ‘Anglezark’ and it is only in the 1900’s that we first see the modern spelling, ‘Anglezarke’. In 1894, there were plans to join Anglezarke to Heapey, but ratepayers protested sufficiently.

Yates Map of 1786 was the first accurate mapping undertaken in Lancashire.

There is an alternative history to the name. According to a book I discovered in the British Library, Anglezargh may mean Heathen Temple. The first portion indeed includes the name of a Norse deity, although people did name themselves after deities. Anlaf’s Argh = The Temple Of Anlaf The Heathen.

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4 thoughts on “About”

Chorley Standard 21st October 1865
Death on 13th October of Robert Charnock due to a fall of stone in a quarry belonging to Thomas Pilkington. The Inquest took place at the Black Boy. He was 27.

Chorley Standard April 14th. 1866

Death at Sister Millstone Quarry, Anglezarke Chorley Standard April 14th. 1866. On Monday afternoon at 4 O’clock Thomas Pilkington stone dealer of Anderton was killed at the Sister Millstone Quarry, in Anglezarke, he was crushed against a rock by a heavy stone. The deceased body was removed to Turners Farm, Rivington. The obituary the following week stated that ” he was much respected and a large employer, buried at Rivington Unitarian Chapel. The tree ‘Old Tom’ once stood to
mark the spot of his demise.

United Utilities now own Moses Cocker Farm having bought the owner out. I think it was due to animal waste pollution running into the reservoir over time and (so I heard) that the farmer was given an order to clean up the waste with a fine or sell for market value ( he chose the latter). The farm is occupied by tenants (non farming).

At this time [1841] Samuel is still unmarried and living at Stones House, Anglezarke with his widowed mother Mary and brothers Thomas, Ralph and Joseph.

Charles died in 1843 and Jane then married her cousin Samuel Pilkington on 22 Jan 1844, they had a son Thomas in 1844, then Jane died in 1845. Samuel then remarried on 18 Jan 1847 to Ann Holt his step daughter – there was 19 years between them. On the 1851 census at Simms Farm – the two youngest Holt children have the surname Pilkington. Charles Holt/Pilkington reverts back to Holt as an adult.
1851 Simms Farm, Anglezarke
Samuel Head 42 Farmer of 137 Acres b. Anglezarke
Pilkington Ann Wife 23 Anglezarke
Pilkington Thomas Son 6 Anglezarke
Pilkington Samuel Son 4 Anglezarke Pilkington Joseph Son 2 Anglezarke
Pilkington Sarah Step Dtr 15 Employed on Farm Anglezarke
Pilkington Charles Step Son 12 Shepherd Anglezarke